CA reduced EBT theft by 83% since Jan 2024: www.kcra.com/article/cali... A few reflections on this work 🧵below Disclaimer: This is my view as a private citizen though I work at CDSS and have been involved in the dept's response to theft for the last 3.5 yrs 1/10

Listen, I know the housing shortage is killing a great American city, but that really is one of our most historically significant Safeways www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/s...

I am increasingly convinced the optimal number of laptops per child is 0 (or at least much lower than 1). From the latest Journal of Public Economics issue: doi.org/10.1016/j.jp...

AI dialogues shifted political support by 2 to 3 points in trials, eclipsing standard ads. Roughly one-third of this effect persisted for a month. However, models optimized for persuasion proved more factually error-prone. #MLSky

striking that so many cities are seeing parallel homicide declines this year. i have no good explanation jasher.substack.com/p/the-fbi-wi...

🧵New paper out: “Beyond Time: Unveiling the Invisible Burden of Mental Load” with Barigozzi, Monfardini, Montinari, @elenapisanelli.bsky.social @svevav.bsky.social 🔗 arxiv.org/abs/2505.11426 /1

Policy research folks take note - CPL's research is very influential in California state policy and this high-impact role will help expand that influence. Consider applying and share with your networks!

One week until this job posting closes. Do dope research, serve the great state of California. Join us.

This is a great research team for those seeking to make impact within government.

An opportunity to join our fantastic research team at the California Department of Social Services!

Our research shop at the CA Dept of Social Services is #hiring for a Principal Researcher calcareers.ca.gov/CalHrPublic/... Posting closes 9/15. Please help us spread the word! This position will lead high impact research projects and shape/set standards for our research portfolio.

Always happy to uplift job opportunities that can have a positive impact for children and families! Check out the opportunity at the top of this thread👇 Thank you for the shout out, @joaquinc.bsky.social! We always appreciate working with the California Department of Social Services team.

Our research shop at the CA Dept of Social Services is #hiring for a Principal Data Enigneer calcareers.ca.gov/CalHrPublic/... Posting closes 9/8. Please help us spread the word! This position will build data pipelines for our in-house research and analytics.

Richest guy in the world telling us we can’t afford to have our government fund cancer research.

Feels like a good time to revisit this little bit of American history, or learn it if you didn’t already know it: newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/research/how...

NYC>Chicago is legitimately a great corridor for high-speed rail, if states of NY, PA, OH, IN & IL could unite for it. You could hit: —NYC—20m —Philly—6m —Harrisburg—600k —Pittsburgh—2.4m —Youngstown—400k —Cleveland—2.2m —Toledo—600k —Ft Wayne—500k —South Bend—300k —Chicago—9m On a ~straight route

Doing the unthinkable: The deep cuts to the #CDC's workforce today are expected to decimate the Epidemic Intelligence Service, a program that has trained public health rapid responders for decades. Envy of the world. Poof! www.statnews.com/2025/02/14/t...

Bureaucracy, famously not important in war

I'd rather continue to fund the banking police (who have returned billions to consumers) rather than giving everyone a check for $2.15

Here's why your education friends had a real rough one today. It's... it's the entire education data collection apparatus of the United States. www.edweek.org/policy-polit...

Posted around NYC, Chicago, DC and other cities. Be creative. Do something!

Everyone should be pointing out what is happening at CFPB. There is zero argument to be made here that this is being done to provide taxpayer value. The agency's budget is minuscule, averaging like $600 million/year, yet it has obtained $20 billion in payments from corporations to Americans

New WP with @vincentab.bsky.social @ryancbriggs.net. We use LLMs and RAs to track publication trends in polisci. Here’s how subfields have changed in AJPS and JOP osf.io/v7fe8

Plainly unlawful and unconstitutional. No one can issue such an order; the President and his officers cannot simply ignore an entity created and funded by Congress.

I’ve been studying civil rights protests for 20 years. With new mobilization against Trump’s agenda, I’m sharing a thread summarizing my research on how nonviolent & violent actions by 1960s activists and police influenced media, elites, public opinion & voters. 1/ www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

This also isn't the first "Marshall Plan" that Newsom has announced. In 2019 he said he would build 3.5 million new homes in California by 2025. He later downgraded his goal to 2.5 million homes. As of December 2024, the state has only permitted 650,000 housing units during his governorship

Every day that large media outlets fail to put words like “illegal” and “unconstitutional” into their headlines is a day they are choosing to normalize a national crisis

Should cities spend $$$ on police or social services if reducing crime is the goal? I summarize the research on this question in this now-un-paywalled article. www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

The story of this first week is corruption. Billionaires seated on the inaugural stage in front of the cabinet, crypto pump and dump, and the illegal firing of IGs. The media is acting like this is too chaotic and bewildering to interpret, but they are just afraid of sounding shrill. It’s corrupt.

This is highly relevant today. While we can debate the merits of specific 'DEI' policies—some may indeed be misguided—it’s undeniable that racial discrimination persists in this country. The evidence is clear for those willing to engage with it! bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/cea/written-...

The part I can't get over is that these are all people. People worried about their families' livelihood. People who chose federal service, often over jobs with more credit or more compensation. People who dared to try to make the government work better for everyone. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/25/u...

Some US citizens now assert the right to decide that other US citizens are not legitimate. This is not an action against unauthorized immigrants, but literally against Americans.

"Quantifying the Beige Book’s Soft Data": It works. Now, imagine how much better it could be with a properly trained language model instead of just counting positive and negative words! #LLM #econsky www.stlouisfed.org/o...

Me, writing syllabus: Think I will have a class on gender, identity and administrative burdens on Jan 21. Me, preparing lecture: Well, this fucking sucks. What the fuck. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

New in #HarmReductionJournal: Assessing stigma: Health and social worker regard towards working with people using illicit drugs in Athens, Greece #OpenAccess #PublicHealth link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Good piece from Keith Humphrey on the consequences (social and policy) of being laissez faire with open drug use on streets. PolicySky 🛟 #EMCA www.brookings.edu/articles/the...

This paper is a great example of solid evidence of systemic discrimination: "Black taxpayers are audited at 2.9 to 4.7 times the rate of non-Black taxpayers." This reflects a series of choices built into the IRS audit algorithm: focus on the EITC, and overclaiming of credits.

🚨In Nature🚨 Meta is dropping fact-checking to avoid anti-conservative bias- but is there actually evidence of bias? We this test empirically & find that conservatives * ARE suspended more * BUT share more misinfo So suspension isn't necessarily evidence of bias www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"just immigrate legally bro"

Great bipartisan legislation idea for the new congress: Pass universal free breakfast and lunch in public schools. It would cost less than one percent of what the federal government spends on education. No hungry kids. No stigma. Higher morale. Better grades. It's a no-brainer.

Pandemic EBT good www.nber.org/papers/w33199

The tax cuts will benefit the wealthiest. The offsets include *removing health insurance and food supports for poor people, child support from American kids with immigrant parents. *cutting IRS budgets, which, uh, would actually cost money unless your goal is to foster tax avoidance

This is a really important piece by Max Stier from the Partnership for Public Service. It should have been published in the @washingtonpost.com: “I am asking you — pleading with you: stay. Your decision isn’t just about your career, or a single president.” www.politico.com/news/magazin...

The solar manufacturing boom in the US is a huge, under-covered story. As of Q3, the US has the capacity to produce enough panels to satisfy its own demand -- a fundamental, epochal change from even a few years ago. seia.org/blog/america...

“The long-term health benefits didn’t stop there: commuter cycling was also linked to a 24% reduced risk of cardiovascular hospitalizations, a 51% lower risk of dying from cancer, and improved mental health, as measured by fewer prescriptions for anxiety and depression.” Via @momentummag.bsky.social

Pretty cool work by an MIT colleague: ‘“This is what we’re so excited about, is that it has immediate and direct potential for impact across the value chain of wind power,” Howland says.’ news.mit.edu/2024/new-the...

1/ Does climate activism work? The short answer is yes, and there's been lots of research this year showing how Here are some highlights 🧵

Thanks to a good question by @macrodev.bsky.social and inspired by @paulgp.com, I wrote down my Christmas wish for #econsky / #dkøko economists: Learn SQL and teach it to your students 🙏 It will tremendously help your data work and destress your machines. @duckdb.org makes it easy to get started.